The Patron Saint of Mediocrity

Daniel Larison writes, of the decision to send Joe the Plumber to Israel:

First, this does say something important about the miserable state of the conservative blogosphere as a journalistic medium, and it also tells us something about the thorough Palinification of the right. Palin was praised and embraced because of her perceved ordinariness, and her lack of expertise was regarded by her admirers as an advantage and a desirable trait, and now we are treated to the journalistic equivalent of Palin’s qualifications for the position she sought. In journalism as in politics, standards, qualifications and expertise are now to be thrown out; average-ness, ordinariness and ignorance are to be prized as proof of one’s authenticity. Like Palin’s pseudo-populism, which actually helps preserve and strengthen the hold the establishment has by making populism idiotic, this sort of “amateur” journalism does more to discredit amateurs and reinforce the pretensions of professional journalists than anything else. Far from marking the beginning of a serious rivalry with such outfits as TPM, this heralds the irrelevance of the conservative blogosphere as a vehicle for journalism.

This is important. Not only is the conservative movement entering a phase of "idiotic" populism, driven largely by mediocrity (there is a vast difference between "the common man" who happens to be extraordinarily qualified and "the common man" that is completely out of their league, as was Palin) but the very most populist efforts any political group can hope for these days--independent journalism and blogging--are becoming crippled in the process.

Save for a few good sites, and Larison's blog is among them, the conservative blogosphere is mainly just a lot of shouting. The tone is almost invariably angry or resentful or full of self-pity or indignant accusatory harangues.

So it comes as no surprise that Joe is on his way to becoming a sort of indie-journalist sensation, much as Palin was poised to take the second-highest seat in the Land...

Which calls to mind the final scene in Amadeus, as Salieri rolls through the insane asylum, the Patron Saint of Mediocrity:

Goodbye, Father.  I'll speak for you.  I speak for all mediocrities
in the world.  I am their champion.  I am their patron saint.  On
their behalf I deny Him, your God of no mercy.  Your God who
tortures men with longings they can never fulfill.  He may forgive
me:  I shall never forgive Him.

Mediocrities everywhere, now and to come:  I absolve you all!
Amen!  Amen!  Amen!

Movement conservatism

Mark Thompson sums up what he and I and Alex Massie and others have been saying about movement conservatives.

To catch everyone up on this, Mark has posted here and here on the subject (which has lead him to the term "talk radio dogmatism") stating that the GOP's problems

have not been caused by religious conservatives or adherence to free market beliefs, but instead by a sort of "talk radio" dogmatism in which any given issue becomes a litmus test for whether one is a "true" conservative or Republican.

Which is absolutely true, and essentially what I mean when I describe mainstream conservatives as "shrill" or "brash" and similarly when I complain that conservatives are rarely "conservative in disposition" anymore, but in talking points only. Which leads to my term "talking-points-conservatism." (we might also discuss "talking-heads conservatism")

You see, the problem doesn't necessarily arise due to differences in ideology, but rather the difference in approach. I may differ with Mark on the value of free markets or public education, or with others on the merits of defense spending etc. but the real crux of the problem seems to be that if one strays outside the accepted dogma, or talking-points, one is immediately labeled a closet-liberal, a protectionist, or a heathen. At one point Mark mentioned that Culture11 is part of the de-malkinization of conservatism (or the GOP, I can't recall), and I think this is also a good observation, as Malkin is the embodiment of talking points conservatism, and joins the ranks of Hugh Hewitt and Rush Limbaugh as the vanguard of talk radio dogmatists.

So what are these talking points which make up Conservatism 2.0? From whence does this litmus test arise?

Enter Alex Massie with his "Cult of the Idea of Reagan."

In that sense, then. the troubles of Republicanism now and of the Tories in the last 15 years, were built upon their previous successes. The difficulty is that the second (or third) generation is rarely as talented or adaptable as the trailblazers who won power in the first place. Instead of finding fresh ideas and solutions, they inherit positions and prejudices that, because they worked once before, are assumed to be eternal truths rather than particular answers to particular problems at a particular time.
And because they're seen as eternal truths, any deviation from them is grounds for heresy.

So here we have the framework of modern conservatism, with its foundational dogma stemming from the early 80's and anyone who strays outside of its ideological borders labeled heretics. My forays into the problems I see with supply-side economics are enough to ostracize me from many circles. I stress again, though, it is not so much the difference in ideology but in disposition and approach that causes this to be a problem.

Mark sums up the three terms we've come up with:

For what it's worth, I think of the three phrases to describe the problem, my "talk radio dogmatism" is the catchiest but probably least accurately captures the problem. Massie's "Cult of the Idea of Reagan" is probably the most accurate, but also the most verbose. E.D.'s "talking points conservatism" pretty much splits the difference.

I would suggest again reading Austin Bramwell's "The Right to Remain Silent" as it touches on the value (or lack thereof) in being part of "the movement." The trouble, of course, is that the movement is so much more influential on the face of things than the few independently minded conservatives out there, who choose to evaluate the world through lenses other than Reagan conservatism.

Essentially the side-effect of all of this is not only hyper-partisanship, but also to stagnation within conservatism, and a dearth of new ideas and creative thinking. It leads to a great number of supposedly intelligent people spending a great deal of time with their heads in the proverbial sand, chanting "Drill baby drill" or other such one-dimensional, quadra-syllabic intonations. It leads to the choice of Joe the Plumber not simply as Presidential mascot, but as war-reporter.

In the end, really, it leads absolutely nowhere. We become lost in the echo chamber.

UPDATE: Now I've begun pondering Mark's summation in a different manner. I think that the three terms we're using are not so much interchangeable as they are inter-functional. "Talk radio dogmatism" describes, in a sense, the sort of belief-structure that makes up modern movement conservatism (as dogmatic and shallow); "talking-point conservatism" describes the function or modus operandi of this belief structure; and "The Cult of the Idea of Reagan" provides the framework and historical basis for the belief-structure, and helps explain how the ghost of (the idea of) Reagan still haunts us (regardless of the man's obvious contributions to American politics).

I'd add that 24-media-exposure plays its part as well, but that's another story altogether.

Strengthening marriage

Andrew responds to Larison's response to Conor. (Yes, there's a lot of responding going on out there. You can also read a pretty good post by Joe Carter on this, also a response to Conor, which Scott responds to here). In any case, here's Sullivan:

I think allowing gay couples to marry does strengthen the institution, because it ensures that everyone in a family has access to the same civil rites and rights, and so the heterosexual marriages are as affirmed as effectively as the gay ones. (It is not my experience that the straight siblings and families of gay people feel their marriages affirmed by excluding some of their own.) By removing the incentive for gay people to enter into false straight marriages, which often end in divorce or collapse, wrecked childhoods and betrayed spouses, heterosexual marriage is also strengthened. And the practical alternative to marriage equality - civil unions for straights and gays - presents a marriage-lite option for everyone that clearly does threaten traditional marriage in a way that gay marriage never could.

This is a good take on the subject, and quite close to my own, though I would also advocate stricter divorce laws and other mechanisms to increase marriage success rates. I would also argue that any conservative who has the time to argue endlessly against gay marriage probably ought to be spending that time finding ways to save marriage in general--the culture at present is drifting toward marriage failure. Gay marriage likely won't help or hinder that, so long as our society at large, including not only divorce laws, but also cultural attitudes toward marriage and commitment, remains as shallow and hedonistic as it is now.

This is greatly inflamed by the media, which glorifies sex and scoffs at commitment. There's no good way to change this, as we have a lovely little thing in our country known as free speech. However, as I've argued before, redesigning our communities to be more family friendly, walkable, and connected and then localizing and re-valuing our community institutions that teach our kids their values (like schools) could all go a long way toward creating a better value system in this country.

Where are we now, as a civilization? We have forgotten our history. We live between "anything goes" and "who cares?" in a sort of gluttonous apathy, fueled by disconnectedness from our larger family units and a love of materialism. We are not taught that it takes hard work to sustain a marriage. We are not taught that monogamy is natural, and while difficult, the far better approach to relationships. We may be told this, by our parents (so many of whom turn out to be hypocrites) or our pastors (also, lots of hypocrites there...my best friend in high school had a pastor for a dad, and his parents got divorced. In fact, out of all my old friends, my parents are almost the only couple still together...) But being told something and being taught something are not the same.

Without a larger community to fall back on and to be held accountable to, we become nihilistic and detached. I think Pearl S. Buck sums it up:

"The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself on in a wold of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born."

Do you see what I mean? We need a wider net. My mom comes from a family of eight siblings, and when I was younger I was constantly surrounded by family. We ended up moving (several times) and as I grew into those restless, rebellious years I had virtually no (extended) family to speak of.

Which led to a great deal of rebellion on my part, I think. It would have been harder to face all my uncles and aunts, cousins, grand parents, etc. than simply my parents. But I didn't have to. We'd cut ourselves off.

So as a society, as conservatives, the point should be finding ways to change the world to enforce family, connectivity, anti-materialism, and love. Gay marriage does no harm to any of these things. If anything, it strengthens society because it incorporates the non-mainstream into the mainstream. It helps settle people down.

More on this later...

Re-engage, elevate...

Scott Payne has an interesting piece up on community, in which he discusses one direction he'd like to see conservatives take their politics (which gets into the Sam's Club Republican vein a little)

I would like to wax theoretical about the GOP and conservatives more broadly moving to become the party and movement that goes about reengaging and reinvigorating those considerable segments of the population who feel utterly disenfranchised. When I suggest that kind of re-engagement I mean it in more than just the economic fashion that Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat suggest in their book Grand New Party. I mean a re-engagement in the first principles of democracy that don’t necessarily swing into simply populist majority rules democracy, but the intellectual and emotional re-engagement in the ongoing discussion about what the country does and how it goes about doing it. I would like to wax optimistic about this as the responsible direction for American conservatism moving into the future, but I’m not optimistic.

Neither am I, at least not any time soon. I used to be a hawk until I began to realize the many ways in which our aggressive foreign policy has made governing here at home nearly impossible. From there I moved in the ideological direction of the paleo and crunchy cons, who seemed to fit my style of community-building, strong-families, etc. as well as my hunger for real, intellectual discussion. Just read Daniel Larison's work and then head over and read Michelle Malkin and you see the difference in tone and depth. Read The American Conservative and then go read some of the nonsense over at Pajamas Media. Read Ross Douthat and then read Charles Johnson.

This isn't to say we don't need hawks. They can, at times, push through the inertia that builds up around the school of realism.

In any case, I stray from my point. Which is....

Too much focus has been on foreign affairs these last eight years. Too much time has been spent, too much money, worrying about terror and fighting the "war" on said tactic and on its residuals Iraq, Afghanistan, et al. Conservatives have forgotten that governance extends to the home front, and that they are in a unique position to, as Scott says, re-engage Americans who feel left out. Isn't this in a sense exactly what Obama has done?

Now, as I said, I'm not optimistic, but I am heartened by the great discussion going on at least in the blogosphere--or should I say at least in some corners of the blogosphere (which is mostly populated by less-than-intellectual discussion) which seems quite intent on forging something better, more rational, more substantive...

Scott writes,

Not only do blogs have the ability to generate meaningful communities that might not have previously existed, but those communities then might be spurred to meaninginful action that could very well have wide ranging impacts.

Exactly. This has been my feeling regarding the community-building potential of blogs for some time. There is always a give and take between tradition and technology. We always put our traditions, our communities, our relationships somewhat at risk when we adopt new technologies. Our advancements, our new tools, our new infrastructures, at once open up new realms of possibility and shut down old ones. The neighborhood was never the same after the advent of the car, nor were towns after the building of the national interstate highway system. We become slowly more encapsulated within our gadgets--connected and apart.

Yet blogging, at its best, does just the reverse in a sense, too. It is no replacement for actual communitites, but it can bring together like minds who are passionate about community and help them make a difference. It can elevate the discussion.

That is what we need. Elevation...

Gobsmacked? Flabberdygasted? Hibbettyschnabbered?

James doesn't understand Max's surprise over the Obama cabinet thus far. I think what we need to understand is the conservative press, blogosphere, etc--with the exception of Culture11, The American Conservative, and a few other beacons of reason and sensibility--were all raving poetic about the danger of "radical leftist" Obama, the "most liberal Senator" in the history of all mankind.

Certainly, had one remained in the insulated right-wing bubble during the course of the election (which many conservatives, alas, did) than one would suspect that Obama's choices would have consisted of terrorists, radical preachers, and Dennis Kucinich.

So Max is just a victim of a trend--intellectual isolationism--that is plaguing so many on the Right these days...

This is why...

...I would read Larison all day long and leave the Hot Air conservatives to wilt in the sun of their own self-absorption.

In another fine moment at Eunomia, Larison sums up exactly my thoughts those long years ago as I was derided as unpatriotic for not supporting the Iraq war. (I have since been derided as a Bush-loving fascist for not wanting to withdraw immediately, so I suppose all good things come to those who wait!)

This adoption, or rather perversion, of the language of morality by supporters of aggressive policies abroad lends them an initial advantage in framing the debate and setting the terms. I cannot count the number of times that advocates for invading Iraq derided opponents for supposedly being unable to distinguish between good and evil or even for not recognizing the validity of such categories. On the contrary, I think opponents of the war were paying more attention to the line between the two, but what we objected to even more was the ready identification of a bad policy as an expression of Goodness and the idea that opposition to it was somehow morally corrupt.

Sullivan v Dreher

Andrew Sullivan reacts to Rod Dreher. Nobody said this marriage debate would be easy. I guess it goes to the heart of the question of modernity. Dreher sees it intrinsically bound to the failures of our modern culture. Sullivan says Dreher's vision of a return to an older, simpler past is impossible.

I think both are right to some extent. I am very much in line with Dreher's desire to return the culture to a time of heightened spiritual belief, less materialism, and more simplicity. I just disagree that the marriage debate is a fundamental part of the equation. I think other things, like our consumer culture, our media and its glorification of cheap sex, extreme violence, and ridiculous wealth are all far more dangerous to our values than gay marriage.

Sullivan, on the other hand, is wrong to think we can never return to a more teleological society, driven by common purpose, a higher purpose. He's right in that social conservatives need to focus on what is truly important, and denying gays their basic rights is hardly that. With all the ills of this world, social conservatives should be too busy to care about gay marriage.

Essentially I think that the wrong questions are being asked. Modernity is full of moral qualms, but there are good things that have emerged as well. We need to find a way to determine what is truly good, universally good, that has been, perhaps, uncovered only now--like equal rights for women or gays--and what is bad, morally decrepit, or dangerous to a society.

William F Buckley wrote:

Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.

In other words, it is best to be conservative. Tradition has great value. We should seek the wisdom of the past. But we should not excuse ourselves any creative effort, or any reconsideration of our values simply because everything modern can be written off. Sometimes tradition is wrong.

Thus my constant call for balance. If we do seek to do away with some of the follies of modernity, let us be wise in our choosing. Few would argue that the advancements in science should be rolled back. Some social advances are equally right and just.